OK pawrents, I'm not talking about dog tags here, but something almost as impawtant.

Have you ever tried looking for a specific topic in our three legged dog Discussion Forums, only to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of posts returned by the built-in Search feature? Who has time to look through all those posts? You should be playing tag instead!

With almost 20,000 posts in our Discussion Forums (and growing every day), we are asking you, dear Tripawds Family Members, to please start including Tags in every new post that you start.

By taking just a few seconds to add Tags, you can help build the Tripawds knowledge base, and make it so much faster for all of us to find information we need.

What's a Tag?

Tags are relevant keyword(s) about each topic. Each tag is a link to related topics containing the same tag. They appear in little boxes beneath every Topic title in each Forum's overview page. You'll also see tags at the top of all individual topics.

Clicking the "Related" button when viewing any topic will also return a quick list of links to similarly tagged topics.

How Do I Make Tags?

Tags can only be created when starting a new topic.

First, create your Topic and write your post, but before clicking "Post New Topic":

1. Look for the "Topic Tags" field underneath your text box, to the left.
2. Type a few relevant words about your topic.
   • For example, if you're asking a question about "power mushrooms," make that phrase a Tag. Or if you want to talk about booties, then "booties" can be a Tag.
3. Can't think of Tags? Click on "Get Suggested Tags From: Local Tags, Yahoo, Tag the Net"
   • We prefer to click on "Local Tags" first. This gives related tags from existing posts. Using existing tags ensures consistency, so that you don't duplicate a tag with the same meaning or a different spelling.
4. If you are the first pawrent to cover a topic, keep Tags to a single word or short phrase. Type in lower case, and separate multiple tags by commas.
5. Remember, there's no limit to how many Tags you can include, but a short list of specific Tags is better than too many slightly realtive tags.

A Note for Forum Moderators:

Forum moderators can add or edit topic tags after posts are created. If you are a moderator who feels like making a huge contribution to Tripawds, you can always add relative tags to existing topics.

Tags can be added/edited from Forum view – where Topic titles are listed – by clicking the small wrench visible to Moderators.

Thanks everyone, for helping to make this the best three legged tripod dog resource in the world!

Read the original blog post for this topic.